Language Barrier Cuts Between Iraq's Arabs and Kurds

Sulaimaniyah, Iraq: Ask younger Iraqi Kurds if they speak Arabic, and they often say no, or not well -- a linguistic barrier with the country's Arabs stemming from a nationalist backlash against Saddam Hussein's brutality.

Most Iraqi Arabs do not speak Kurdish either, meaning some members of the country's two largest ethnic groups have no common language.

This language barrier comes in addition to multiple long-running feuds between the federal government and the country's autonomous Kurdish region that are the cause of considerable tension and resentment between the two sides.

Older Kurds, who grew up when Kurdish areas had less autonomy than they now do, or none at all, faced more pressure to learn Arabic. But that has since decreased, and many younger Kurds now prefer English instead.

"I can understand Arabic but I don't speak it," Joana, a maths teacher, said in the region's second-biggest city of Sulaimaniyah. "I personally prefer English -- I just don't like Arabic."

Ayyub Bahaeddin, a university student, agreed: "We like English more, because Arabic can only be useful in the Middle East, while English (is used) in most of the world."


'Reaction to being liberated'

The regime of now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein killed tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds in bloody crackdowns, while Kurds and members of other minorities were also forced from their homes and replaced by Arabs in a policy known as "Arabisation."

But after a 1991 uprising against Saddam's regime, Kurdish areas of northern Iraq gained greater autonomy from Baghdad and were targeted by an internal blockade.

The lack of Arabic knowledge among a generation of younger Kurds stems from a backlash against years of repression, and from the Kurdish region's isolation from the rest of the country following the uprising.

Qubad Talabani, who was recently named regional deputy prime minister and is one of the outgoing federal president's sons, said the change was "a reaction to being liberated from Saddam, and maybe ... rejecting Iraq."

"In the early nineties ... suddenly you've got this new-found freedom to be Kurdish, to have a Kurdish government, to have your Kurdish flag," he said.

"I think there is a younger generation now that are being taught Arabic at schools, but there's a group in between who don't speak Arabic," he said, noting that the language situation "complicates a country that's already fraught with complications."

But even younger Kurds who are studying the language have faced difficulties with Arabic.

Payman Ali Mohammed, the principal of a Sulaimaniyah secondary school, said the Kurdish regional education ministry had introduced a new Arabic curriculum in some schools to address poor performance.

"Teachers noticed that many of the students couldn't even write a short composition (in Arabic) -- they were memorising it," Mohammed said.

Ultimately, "most of them see the future" in English, she said, noting that students even take summer courses in the language.

But some younger Kurds say they believe learning Arabic is important, and Mohammed questioned the logic behind the backlash against the language due to its association with government abuses.

"Some people think, 'Why should we learn the language of a government that has been oppressing our people?'" she said.

But "if you want to understand your enemy, you should first learn their language."


'A sense of ownership'

Kurdish and Arabic are both official languages in Iraq, but in practice federal business is largely conducted in Arabic, while the Kurds' regional government operates in Kurdish.

Educators say students in Iraqi Kurdistan generally begin studying English before they start studying Arabic, while Kurdish instruction in schools outside the autonomous region is by comparison more limited than Arabic instruction in Kurdistan.

Unless Iraqi Arabs go to Kurdistan for vacation or business, they have little chance to use Kurdish, while the daily bombings and shootings plaguing various Arab areas of Iraq discourage Kurds from leaving their region, where such attacks are rare.

And while most television programmes, newspapers and books were once in Arabic, Kurdish publications and media have since proliferated, removing another need for Kurds to know Arabic well.

Iraqi Kurdistan and the federal government are at odds over issues including territory, natural resources, power-sharing and federal payments to the Kurdish region that politicians say have been delayed and insufficient this year, causing salaries to go unpaid.

The disputes have made Kurdish independence increasingly attractive for some, but major Kurdish political parties have not called for it, and the region remains financially dependent on the federal government for now.

While shared languages play a role, "the key factor to creating a sense of a unified country is a sense of ownership over the country. People need to feel that they are part of a country," Talabani said.

"Iraq today does not have its own identity -- Iraq today has a multitude of identities. There isn't something that binds these different identities together."